the world before later on
by rubertgiles
Summary: After a stumble in time, Hermione finds herself stuck in 1981 in the immediate wake of Voldemort's fall. Living under a Muggle identity in a small town in Wales until the Ministry can send her home, she finds a job at a small pub to wait out the next 5 years.


Hermione had been shooting for the summer of 1991. All she wanted to do was interview Nicolas Flamel, to gain a little more insight into some of the projects he'd set aside for the Ministry and independent researchers like herself to complete after his death.

And it should have been _easy_. After all, she'd used a time turner countless times during her third year, which was the main reason she was able to convince the Department of Mysteries to give her special dispensation to make the trip herself. _"Yes, I understand the dangers of jumping more than a few days into the past. Of _course_ I'm prepared to follow the Department's procedures to the letter."_

She did. She _really_ did, honest. But passage through time was a funny thing—it was nauseating and destabilizing and dizzying and all number of unpleasant things that she'd somehow managed to forget in the 10 years since she'd last done it, and for just a flash, she stopped thinking about her work, Flamel, 1991, and that _mattered_ when there were years at stake compared to just minutes and hours.

Barely did she feel flat ground beneath her feet again before she felt herself falling forward, out of the alley she'd discreetly concealed herself in for her journey. "Shit," she blurted, scrambling to break her fall with her hands.

She took several rapid breaths as she pushed herself up, cringing at her stinging hands and knees for a few moments before looking down and realizing her grave error.

The time turner had been clutched in her right hand, and with her fall, she'd inadvertently smashed it. The hourglass itself was shattered, a few bits poking into her skin while the rest lay scattered across the sidewalk along with miniscule pieces of sand. The smooth, carefully refined metal body of the turner had fared little better, scratched and bent enough that she doubted it would spin—although it wasn't as though anything would happen if she could somehow get it to budge.

"_Shit_," she hissed. "Shit shit _shit_."

"Miss? I said, are you alright?"

Hermione jolted as she looked up and realized that more than five people were crowded around to check on her after the fall, and more were eying her from a few feet away as they passed by.

"Oh yes, yes, I'm quite alright," she said, trying not to sound dismissive as she offered the strangers a shaky smile. "I've only tripped, but I should… I should be getting on."

She was off and running before anyone else could get a word in.

Alright, so time travel had shaken her more than she remembered… and surely the longer trip had exacerbated things. But this sort of thing was exactly why they'd put time travel protocol into place; she'd report to the Ministry with proper documentation and they might fine her, or revoke her time travel access for such and such period, but that was manageable. She could graciously accept the potential penalties for her mistake.

It was pure chance that found Hermione waiting to cross a street, that found her glancing down at the Muggle newspaper in a nearby kiosk.

That was the moment when her stomach finally dropped.

She had not only destroyed her means for getting home—she had landed in the wrong time entirely.

The date on the paper was October 30, 1981. The next day, Voldemort was going to kill Lily and James Potter and unknowingly bring about his own demise.

The first functioning time turner to allow for travel across years, rather than hours, would not be created for another five years.

* * *

Hermione was bounced across several offices in the Ministry as she tried to explain the urgency of her desire to meet with an Unspeakable without revealing the details of her story. The Departments of Magical Law Enforcement, Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, Magical Transportation, and even International Magical Cooperation all seemed to have something to say about the matter, until she was brought before the Minister for Magic herself, Millicent Bagnold, who promptly said, "Oh, for Merlin's sake, why has no one just contacted the Department of Mysteries yet? Unless this is some new covert plot orchestrated by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, some secretive young woman trying to meet with an Unspeakable is below my pay grade."

Upon receiving her time turner, Hermione had also been given a letter, which she was told not to read, but to give to any Unspeakable in the case that anything went horribly wrong.

She was finally brought in front of one and she gave over that letter wordlessly.

Two hours later, she found herself standing in Gringotts, exchanging her emergency money for Muggle currency under the name Viola Price.

* * *

For the next five years, she was to live under an assumed Muggle identity, remaining as discreet and anonymous as possible. She and her parents had traveled rather widely throughout England, and her extended family was large and well-distributed across the country, so, for the sake of ensuring her anonymity, it was decided that after staying the night at the Leaky Cauldron, she would live on the outskirts of Cardiff. The Ministry would arrange a flat for her, put down the first month's rent, but after that, she was on her own.

She was to find an unassuming job. Work. Refrain from making much of an impression on anyone.

When they were able to send her home, she could expect their owl.

Hermione laid awake the first night in her creaky, empty flat, unable to think of anything but the fact that, as the United Kingdom slept, one of her best friends was becoming an orphan.

* * *

A few doors down from her flat, there was a little pub with a 'Help Wanted' sign in the window. Hermione had a fabricated CV prepared – one of countless bits of documentation the Unspeakables had provided her with – and less than a week later, she was at work, serving tables during the day, working the bar in the evening, cleaning after closing.

She'd never done such mindless work, but at first, she wanted it—she was working so hard that all she could do was go home and sleep, and it saved her the trouble of having to fully process and accept what had happened.

The days had begun to bleed into one another, her Muggle life settling, and she had stopped thinking quite so much about what the other Hermione, her family, her friends were likely doing at a given moment.

"Viola, love, that bloke in the corner hasn't asked me for anything but water the whole time he's been in. Would you charm him into ordering something else or tell him to move his arse out of a paying customer's seat?"

While Hermione did not like it when her boss sent her to tell off customers, she had to concede that the man had been there for quite some time, so she acquiesced with a sigh and an, "Alright, Reg."

She checked in on her other tables on the way, busied herself flipping through her order pad as she neared the back booth – optimistic, perhaps, that she could at least encourage the man into buying some coffee and a sandwich – so that she talked into the pad as she arrived at the table: "Sorry, sir, but the boss wants me to nag you to order a drink or some food or I'm afraid—"

Looking up, she faltered, her throat going dry.

A young Remus Lupin sat before her, more youthful than she'd ever seen him, but somehow looking just as worn-out and weather-beaten.

He barely looked at her. "All I can afford's a coffee."

"A- alright," Hermione stammered. "Black?"

"Yes please." Almost as an afterthought, he turned his gaze to Hermione just long enough to give her a feeble smile that didn't reach his eyes.

The walk from his table to the counter seemed to take an eon, during which Hermione's thoughts raced. She knew Remus was rather directionless after Voldemort's fall, losing all of his closest friends in the blink of an eye. From what she understood, he had aimlessly traveled England, searching for any odd jobs he could get as a werewolf.

She had not imagined that he would manage to wander into her little Muggle pub in Wales.

Reaching the kitchen, she hesitated, swallowed hard, then jotted down a ticket for a roast beef sandwich and chips.

"That'll be a pound for the coffee," she informed him as she set down the mug and his plate.

He seemed so startled at the food that he didn't even argue with her at first—he blinked down at the table for a few moments, then looked up at Hermione blankly. "I didn't—"

"I believe you did."

"I'm not interested in your charity, miss," Remus said quietly. "No matter how well-meaning."

Hermione considered him. "It's not charity. Just consider it a favor."

"A favor from a waitress in a pub whom I'm never going to see again?"

She shrugged. "A thank you, then. For some people who can't accept it themselves."

Remus was unamused, skeptical. "And who would that be?"

"For James and Lily." Hermione nudged the sandwich closer to him.

He lost whatever little color he had in his face. "What did you say?"

And she didn't smile, she wasn't going to smile after that. But looking at him with the utmost sympathy, she gently repeated, "A pound. For the coffee."

Remus was on the verge of pushing her, she could tell, but he looked around at the Muggles in the pub and looked up at her and detected no ill will in her expression, apparently, because he swallowed and pulled a coin from his pocket, checking its value before setting it on the table for Hermione.

"Enjoy your meal, sir," she murmured.

He ate slowly, and Hermione didn't know whether it was because he wanted to sit or because he was hoping so that she would check in on him again once he was better prepared to question her. But she didn't return to his table, and he eventually left without a word.

* * *

Between lunch and dinner, Hermione had a two-hour break, which she usually used to take an afternoon nap. When she left the pub, however, she saw Remus sitting on the curb across the street.

She strode over to him, holding eye contact as she crossed the street and arrived at his feet. "Hello again."

"I've been trying to remember you from school," Remus informed her. "Or my village growing up. Or anything that might tell you…" But he trailed off.

Hermione hesitated. Frankly, she knew that she shouldn't say anything. She couldn't even imagine what would happen if it was discovered that she was talking with a wizard she knew from her past, his future.

That day, her reason did not win out.

"My flat's in that building right there, if you'd like to talk with a few less… Muggles about." She nearly censored herself, but realized how foolish that was; no one passing by would give the word a second thought if they did hear it.

Remus stood up wordlessly, so Hermione led him inside. It felt, in some ways, like the most rebellious thing she had ever done.

"You didn't say Harry," he told her as soon as she'd shut her door. He strode over to the other side of the room, began pacing as he said, "That's what's been nagging at me, more than just finding a witch at some hole-in-the-wall Muggle pub in Cardiff. If you are a witch, I suppose. Perhaps you're a squib."

"I'm a witch."

When Remus just eyed her, Hermione rolled her eyes and shrugged her jacket off, directing it to hang itself up on the nearby coat hook with a wordless spell. To Remus, she directed an exasperated look of, _Couldn't you have just trusted me_.

No, perhaps he couldn't have, not in the wake of what she knew he'd been through the past few years. But she needed to diffuse the tension in the room somehow, and do anything to ignore the part of herself that was screaming that she shouldn't have revealed herself to him at all.

"A witch, then," he said slowly. "But you weren't at Hogwarts. I'd remember you if I'd met you there, or… or anywhere else."

"Would you?" Hermione asked, amused.

"I would." And something about his certainty shook her, though she tried her best not to show it.

For a few moments, he allowed those words to hang in the air as he glanced around the rest of the flat. "Then there's the fact that you didn't say Harry. You said James and Lily. And even if you looked at me, a stranger, and knew, somehow, that I was a wizard… someone who didn't know me, who didn't know—" He faltered, his expression going blank for an instant before he looked at her again. His voice shook. "Should have said Harry."

Damn, he was right. She should have said Harry.

"By my reckoning, then, I see two possibilities." Remus stopped pacing, leaning both hands on the back of Hermione's sofa. "One. You're a follower of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and you've used Polyjuice Potion to steal the face of some poor Muggle woman until you can carry out a more long-term plan of escape or concealment. Perhaps you recognized me and decided to leverage me for information, or torture and kill me."

He spoke so matter-of-factly that it nearly broke Hermione's heart.

"And two?"

Remus grimaced and gave her a shrug. "I haven't the foggiest. But my imagination is only so big, and I think I've got to allow for the possibility that you're something else entirely."

"You think I'm a Death Eater, and you followed me to my flat anyway?"

Hermione understood why an instant after she said it, but Remus answered her before she could stop him. "If you are, there's nothing you can take from me that your lot haven't taken already."

"I imagine that's true," Hermione breathed. And that truly crushed her.

Silence hung between them, Remus watching her expectantly. She could see his wand poking out of his robes, but his hands were nowhere near it, and it didn't even look like he was prepared to reach for it if she were to attack him.

There was a very strong possibility that he was expecting, waiting for Hermione to kill him. That he wanted her to do it.

"I'm not a Death Eater," she told him at last. "Voldemort and his followers hurt or killed a lot of people I care about very much." _Including you_, she didn't say.

"Who are you, then?"

"Viola. Viola Price. And I'd… really like to make you a cup of tea."

* * *

Since Remus left the pub, Hermione had been plotting, working her way through a story of who she was. Something that he couldn't verify without doing an awful lot of work, but something that would make enough sense that he wouldn't want to bother.

She told him that she was a Muggleborn, wove a new story for him using as many details as possible from the life that the Ministry had already fabricated for her. She grew up in Cokeworth with an American father and English mother. When she began to show magical affinity, her parents thought of her father's brother, who was also a wizard. Intent to encourage and nurture her skills but lacking the confidence to do it themselves – or the knowledge that, at age 11, she would have received a Hogwarts letter – they sent her to America when she was 10 to live with her uncle until going to Ilvermorny.

Her school years were spent in America, her summers in England. When she was 16, she ran into an old primary school friend—Lily Evans.

"I had no idea she had any magical friends in primary school except for Snape."

"Neither did she, at first." Hermione chuckled, partially because this had felt like such a stroke of genius and partially for the sake of performance. "We had never been very close when we were younger, so we both initially kept it a secret."

Hermione told him that she was the one who slipped up, shortly before James and Lily's wedding. Hermione wasn't able to attend because she had to be in America at the time, and she'd lamented the fact that she couldn't even Apparate to the ceremony for a few short hours.

Remus cracked his first real smile then.

"I only saw her once more, after that. She was pregnant with Harry, only just beginning to show. And she showed me some wedding pictures, which is… how I recognized you. You were one of James's groomsmen."

"I'm surprised you could tell. I feel like I've aged decades since that day."

"Funny," Hermione murmured. "You seem so young to me."

He laughed darkly but didn't reply before taking a long, slow drink from his tea. When he did speak, it was to ask, "How did you find yourself here, then? Living among Muggles. You said you were in Horned Serpent, and you seem quite bright—I hardly imagine that you aspired to work in a Muggle pub once you left school."

And this was it, this was the part of her lie that hurt the most to say aloud. "My uncle… he told my dad about what was happening here, with Voldemort and… and everything else. About him targeting Muggleborns in particular. My parents panicked. They begged me to hide, to stay out of trouble, and I… I listened. I wish I had been brave enough to fight."

"No, you don't." There was no harshness or malice in his words, but to Hermione, it felt like a punch to the gut anyway. Remus peered at her over his tea. "For all you know, your parents saved your life."

Hermione swallowed hard; she found that she couldn't quite say anything.

"The war's over, though," he offered eventually. "So why are you still here?"

"I always felt out of place as a Muggleborn in the wizarding world," she told him. The truth. One of the most truthful things she'd said to him since they'd met that afternoon. "That was only exacerbated by the fact that I was away from home, at an American school… I came back here to work, but I barely had time to start looking for a job before my parents asked me to go into hiding. I'm honestly still wondering whether there's anything there for me."

Remus hummed softly. "That makes two of us."

* * *

"I want you to promise me you'll come here. If you need a meal or a sofa to sleep on."

"What was that I said about charity?"

"It's not charity," Hermione insisted. Bloody hell, he was exasperating when he wasn't any older or wiser than her. "It's a gesture of friendship."

Remus eyed her hesitantly as he fastened the clasp of his traveling cloak. "I don't need any friends."

Turning on his heel, he Disapparated.

* * *

There was a very real chance that Hermione would never see Remus again. She suspected, however, that if he did ever allow himself to come back, the first time would be because of the moon.

Sure enough, not long after the new year – and only one day after the full moon – she got home from closing down the pub to find Remus dozing against her door. He jolted awake at the sound of her approaching footsteps.

"You could have just Apparated into my flat," she told him.

"No, I couldn't have." Remus clamored to his feet and gave her a tired smile. "Is that sofa still free?"

"I told you, Remus. Any time."

He still waited a beat before walking over the threshold. Allowing Hermione to take his cloak, he looked around hesitantly. "Although I feel I'm imposing enough as it is, would you mind doing me another favor?"

"What is it?"

"I… I got into a rather unpleasant accident the other day, and I could honestly use a bit of help getting my back bandaged up."

"Oh." Hermione had not let on at any point, during their first meeting, that she knew Remus was a werewolf, and it seemed he wasn't intent to tell her. She had no idea how she should play this, whether she should ask questions and feign confusion, or give him the same courtesy of relative anonymity that he had given her. "Certainly, Remus. I'd be happy to help."

He nodded curtly, then glanced further into her flat. "May I request, though… that you not ask me for any details about what happened?"

"Alright," Hermione whispered.

It was bad. Knowing that he was a werewolf, Hermione could tell that the gashes on his back were self-inflicted; claw marks that ran along his shoulders and down one side. Frankly, she imagined that anyone in the wizarding world who didn't know about his lycanthropy would think that he was doing something incredibly shady, perhaps smuggling magical creatures…

Or they would put two and two together, because really, the truth seemed difficult to miss, with this ragged bloke showing up immediately after the full moon, exhausted and covered in scratches old and new.

But from her, he got nothing. She tended to his wounds and he flinched or hissed once or twice. She made tea and stayed up too late with him, talking about light things while they both pretended that he hadn't clearly been through something bad.

When Hermione woke up, he was gone, but he'd left breakfast waiting for her.

* * *

Remus started coming by a few times a month, randomly enough that he was probably trying to prevent Hermione from noticing that he always needed somewhere to rest up after the full moon. Each time, he would show up at the pub, or she would get home to find him at her door, and each time, she would tell him that he could let himself in. It was futile, but she liked it, liked getting into a rhythm with him.

Hell, she liked _him_. Little by little, she stopped remembering him as her Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, as an Order member, as Harry's dad's mate. He was just her friend. And he avoided a lot of subjects with her, but she was keeping a lot from him, too, and she was pretty sure he knew it.

When it came down to it, Remus showed up and it meant that Hermione wasn't alone for a day or two. Sometimes, he even made her feel like she belonged there.

She never knew how much she needed him until he was around.

* * *

The full moon hit right after Halloween. For the first time in months, Remus had hurt himself badly enough that he asked for Hermione's help to dress his wounds—wounds that he otherwise tended to hide.

He was leaning against her bathroom sink, looking down at Hermione's hand and trying not to flinch as she wiped away some blood from a pretty deep gash.

"You know, don't you," he said quietly.

She swallowed, kept her eyes on his skin. "Yes."

"For how long?"

If the moment didn't feel so serious, she might have laughed. What a complicated question. "A long time."

Remus said nothing for some moments. Then he settled his hand on Hermione's wrist, stopping her. "Viola."

Hermione looked up at him wordlessly.

"Why haven't you told me to sod off, then?"

"Why should I?"

"For a thousand reasons."

It took everything in Hermione to keep from rolling her eyes, because she knew this argument, knew how often he'd had it with others, and she had very little interest in entertaining it herself.

She looked back down, continuing her meticulous cleaning of the wound on his stomach. "I couldn't care less that you're a werewolf, Remus. And I'd rather you not try to convince me that I should shun you just because you feel guilty that you're here and your friends aren't."

Again, Remus was silent. Frankly, Hermione was too nervous to even look up to gauge his expression.

Then he reached out, so slowly. His hand trembling. He nudged her chin so that she would look up and meet his eye.

"Can I kiss you?" he murmured.

Remus's question took Hermione by surprise. It shouldn't have—even as her mouth fell slightly open and she blinked at him, speechless, she was tracing over months of interactions that had led to that question.

And Hermione wanted to say yes. Because she was lonely. Because she was far from home and Remus felt familiar. Because she _liked_ him, genuinely, in a gradual, creeping way that had first caught her attention somewhere around July.

But she also knew how impermanent it would be, and she knew that even allowing them to become as intimate as they already had was a betrayal of the Ministry, a betrayal of Remus's trust.

"I should say no," she whispered. And she could see it building in his expression immediately, an anxiety and a self-hatred and a certainty that this was about him, about his faults. "Not… not for the reasons you think. There's just…"

"It's alright," Remus told her.

She didn't know what to say. Selfishly, she was on the verge of telling him to kiss her anyway. She could have tried to change the subject but all she could think of was stories about a future she couldn't reveal to him.

"James and Sirius loved having a werewolf for a mate," he said, squashing the moment in one beat. "They used to find all these ways to make jokes about it around kids at Hogwarts who had no idea…"

Hermione's head was buzzing and she listened to him talk for quite some time.

Somewhere in there, her selfishness won out. Her loneliness won out.

"I want you to kiss me."

Remus didn't look fazed, exactly—he just watched her for a few moments, appraising her. "Even though you shouldn't."

"Even though I shouldn't."

A hint of a smile tugged at Remus's mouth, but he didn't move.

So Hermione kissed him.

* * *

Hermione woke up the next morning to find Remus gone, and breakfast waiting. Sitting beside the plate was a small piece of paper that he had fashioned into a little wolf and enchanted to howl up at her.

It made Hermione chuckle, and she placed it on her bedside table with the utmost affection, smiling at it as she fell asleep the following night.

The next time Hermione saw him, Remus gave her an out. She was closing down the pub, so she didn't get home 'til late, and there he was, dozing against her door. Just like the first time she found him waiting for her.

He smiled softly at her, told her, once again, that he wasn't going to let himself in, wasn't going to intrude. And as he trailed in behind her, he asked, "Blanket on the chair next to the sofa?" Because Hermione had gotten into the habit of keeping a blanket and pillow nearby for his visits.

She swallowed hard. Again, this was a pivotal moment, and even as she turned to look at him, she knew she was making the dangerous choice. The selfish choice.

"You don't have to sleep on the sofa, Remus."

"Viola… if you feel obligated—"

"I don't want you to sleep on the sofa, Remus," she amended. Quietly enough that it seemed, for a moment, as though he didn't hear her.

And Remus stepped closer. Hermione held his gaze, noting the sadness there, and she thought about the gulf he was trying to fill.

"I don't want that either."

* * *

Things didn't change much at first. Hermione didn't see Remus most days in a given month. He still didn't let himself into her flat and he was always gone when she woke up in the morning.

But gradually – so gradually she didn't see it until it had somehow _happened_ – she saw him more days than she didn't. She woke up to him holding her so tight and she sometimes found herself nearly getting to work late because she didn't want to budge.

A year crept by, a year of Hermione falling asleep to Remus peppering barely-there kisses along her shoulder, waking up to his arm draped over her hip, and dreaming of a war that would destroy him in between.

During slow hours at the pub, she started to daydream about what might happen if she just disappeared. Gave up the flat the Ministry had found with her and brought Remus along for the ride.

Every time she entertained the thought of spending forever in the past, she shook it away with the realization that she couldn't, in good conscience, make that choice without telling him everything.

There wasn't a scenario she imagined in which Remus spoke with her after that.

* * *

Neither of them said, "I love you." Hermione was pretty sure he _did_ love her, or at least was pretty sure that he thought he did. She was also pretty sure he avoided saying it in case it somehow made him lose her in the same way he'd lost everyone else.

Hermione knew that she loved Remus the day after a full moon, when she got home to take her nap before the evening shift and found that an exhausted Remus had passed out on the bed with a book open at his side, but he'd left a full cup of tea waiting on her side of the bed.

She curled up and dozed with her head in his lap, hating herself more than a little.

* * *

They raced through another year, and Hermione started to have fully-fledged nightmares.

Of the final battle, of that fight in the Department of Mysteries during her 5th year, of the damp basement of Malfoy Manor and the torture that she endured on the floor above… of the sight of friends and love ones' bodies from across the Great Hall, dead.

It wasn't the first time—she used to have these sorts of dreams right at the end of the war, but they'd gone away almost entirely, and when she had them, they were no longer enough to leave her trembling and drenched in sweat when she awoke.

Remus didn't ask, but she knew he wanted to. He wasn't foolish, and he didn't miss that Hermione was genuinely, visibly shaken when he'd jolt her awake most nights, telling her she'd been screaming or twisting herself up in the sheets.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd guess that you had been through the war with us after all," he told her softly one night.

Hermione buried her face in his chest. "I suppose I was, in a way," she breathed.

She almost told him the truth that night, except that she didn't know where she would have started.

* * *

Remus's father died. He and Hermione woke up one morning to an owl tapping on her window, laden with the letter that reported the news.

He sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea and staring blankly at a spot on the wall while Hermione sat with him. Once she had gotten her initial hug, her _"I'm sorry,"_ out of the way, she'd remained mostly silent, watching him tenderly and squeezing his hand when he reached out to her.

Finally, she told him, "I didn't know your dad was still around."

"Yeah, I suppose we don't… talk about our families much."

Not ever, but Hermione wouldn't dream of saying that out loud, certainly not so matter-of-factly. The thing that she loved, that she _needed_ out of what they had was that she could trust him, could feel at home with him, without feeling like either of them expected permanence. After their first meeting, she hadn't wanted to dilute that with much talk of personal details like family – fabricated or real – and it seemed like he had felt the same.

"We didn't… it wasn't that we didn't get on, but we didn't talk much once my mum died," he told her. "The war was on, and I would have never forgiven myself if something happened to him because he seemed too sympathetic to his werewolf son. By the time it was all over, it just felt easier to stay away."

Several moments of silence hung between them before Hermione asked, "Would you like me to come with you to the funeral?"

At first, Remus just nodded.

Then he said, "Let's get off this damn island, Viola."

Hermione's breath caught in her throat. She had spent countless hours working to remind herself of the precarity of her situation, trying to imagine how she could extract herself from this small life she'd built without being cruel. It had been a long time since she'd dared to imagine running off with him, but this was not so much because she recognized the impracticality as it was that if she thought about it too long, she feared that she would give into the urge.

"After paying rent and utilities, we've hardly got the money to eat, let alone travel," she murmured.

"No, that's not true," Remus said at once. He was clearly trying to conceal the energy and excitement that was beginning to overcome him, but he couldn't hide the enthusiasm in his eyes. "Not anymore. Not with what my dad will have left me. It won't be much, but I imagine it's enough to start a new life somewhere."

Hermione opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to speak but at a total loss for words.

Remus misread her hesitance, jumping to add, "This isn't about me trying to push for… for something permanent, mind you. I still can't really imagine inflicting that on you, no matter how much you try to convince me that my lycanthropy isn't a burden. But ignoring the daunting concept of forever… We could go away for now."

"Where on earth would we go?" Hermione murmured. She understood that this was, in part, Remus's attempt to soften the blow of the news of his father, and she was trying to walk a delicate balance, to give him room to fantasize without allowing him to cling to the idea for real, but she was beginning to get carried away herself, imagining her and Remus in a small coastal town somewhere in Europe, or off in some mid-sized city in America where they would be anonymous, two faces in a sea of other nobodies.

"Wherever we fancied. Ireland, or Greece, or halfway round the world. Just… just think about it, Viola. Please."

Hermione shut her eyes, breathed deeply, and reminded herself that in only a year and a half or so, she would be hearing from the Ministry so that the Unspeakables could send her home.

She squeezed Remus's hand and tried to convince herself that the world she belonged in, her true future, was better than what he was asking of her.

* * *

She couldn't have pinpointed what pushed her over the edge, though it certainly had something to do with the genuine warmth in his gaze as he glanced over at her while his father was being lowered into the ground.

The day after they arrived back at her flat, she was off of work, having reported to Reggie that it was _her_ father who had passed so that she could be there for Remus if he needed her. She and Remus were sitting together after lunch, drinking tea and reading together on her sofa with his head in her lap and her fingers in his hair.

"I need to be honest with you about something, Remus," Hermione whispered.

"Hmm?" He sounded casual, comfortable, and it hurt to know that she was about to disrupt the one relatively stable thing he had left.

"I… I'd like to run away with you, but you deserve to know the truth about me first."

Remus did seem to process her tone and the potential severity of what she was saying, then, because he sat up abruptly, looking her with an openness that crushed Hermione even more.

"What is it, Viola?"

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath—"I suppose that's the first thing. My… my name isn't Viola Price."

* * *

When Hermione imagined herself telling Remus the truth, she'd feared that he would think she was mad.

As she told him about her life, though – what she could tell him about her life, and about knowing him, without giving away all too much – she realized that he was all too ready to believe her. Because he'd grown to trust her.

That didn't mean he liked her very much by the time she was done.

He got to his feet, claimed his traveling cloak and wand from their place by the front door, and Disapparated without so much as a, "goodbye."

* * *

For a week, Hermione got home from work every evening and was surprised to find that Remus had not come by to collect what few belongings he had.

But not as surprised as she was when she finished making a round of drinks for some customers one night and looked to the end of the bar to see him sitting there, fidgeting with his hands to avoid looking at her.

She placed a glass of whiskey in front of him by way of greeting, and a hint of a smile tugged at his lips.

"I found you," Remus told her softly. "The other you, I mean. She must be, what, just barely in primary school?"

Hermione nodded. "Six years old."

"Blimey," Remus murmured. He curled his fingers around the glass and pulled it closer. "I don't think I truly believed you until I saw your parents. That photograph you showed me was… was really them."

"Yes, it was."

For what felt like an eternity, he didn't say anything else, but he'd come in to the pub; Hermione was going to leave it to him to steer the ship. Finally—"At first I tried to tell myself that you came up with this absurdly fabricated story because you didn't want to just tell me to sod off, and I wanted to hate you for that, but when I saw you with your family, I started to understand that I got it all wrong. You told me because you… because you don't _want_ to leave."

"No, I don't," Hermione whispered.

He tilted his head at her. "I don't know much about how this all works, but I understand enough to know that's a very selfish choice."

She grimaced. "You're right. Every moment I've spent with you has been selfish, but this… it's selfish for so many reasons you can't even know. For so many reasons that you'll hate me for, eventually."

"That might be true," Remus said. "But…"

Hermione felt the weight of this pause in her gut, and she had to work very hard to do so much as breathe.

"I think we both fell into this for selfish reasons. And perhaps _I'm_ selfish for saying so, but I stand by what I said last week—I'd go to Mars with you if you asked me to."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Hermione bit her lip. "In a year and a half, they might find me and send me back even if we tried to disappear."

"I know."

"I don't know what this could do to the future that's in front of you. This could… could change everything. For reasons that you can't even imagine."

"I know."

"And depending on what happens… you might hate me. _Honestly_ hate me. For things I have to keep from you and for…" She faltered, thinking, for the first time in months, about the family he built during the war. "For things I'm keeping you from so that I can have you."

For just a moment, curiosity flashed across his face, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a firm resolve. "Hermione, if you're trying to talk me out of this, you're doing a rubbish job."

She swallowed nervously, and _oh_, did she wish she had the strength to do what needed to be done—erase his memory of every trace of her and return to a solitary existence until the Unspeakables reached out to her.

At some point since she had fallen back in time, Hermione had lost that strength.

"You mentioned Greece. That might be nice."


End file.
